Tutorials

Windows 7 adds some new keyboard shortcuts to the mix, all of them based on the Windows key. Here are my favorites:

In the past few months, I've reconnected with friends from kindergarten through college and beyond. I've discovered thought-provoking online articles and videos I probably wouldn't have found on my own. I've also read meaningless updates from friends, such as "I'm getting in the hot tub," or "just received a special gift from a special friend."

Large high-definition televisions are voracious electricity consumers. Some 50-inch plasmas demand in excess of 400 watts of power when turned on. That's more than a good-size, modern refrigerator requires, though the refrigerator stays on 24/7, so it probably devours more energy overall. The other components of your home theater -- the DVR, the Blu-ray Disc player, and the separate surround-sound amplifier and speakers--have their own power demands. And the various parts of your home entertainment system suck juice even when they're "off," so that they can start up more quickly and so that you can turn them on via the remote control.

CopyTrans ($20) helps you sidestep one of iTunes's most galling built-in limitations. This useful app allows you to backup an entire iPod or iPhone's library, then either place it in a specific folder of your choice, or import the tracks and playlists directly into iTunes. This is handy when you have a hard drive crash and all your tracks are stuck on your iPod with no way to get them off. Or, you'd just like to transfer your music to your PC without any hassle.

Most modern desktops and laptops have power to spare, but netbooks are notoriously pokey. Consequently, you should turn off any operating-system features that can make your Lilliputian PC even slower.

Utter the word “firmware” to the average PC user, and you'll likely elicit a blank stare in return.

Image stabilization technology in cameras and in lenses has revolutionized digital photography, enabling photographers to get dramatically sharper photos without hauling around a tripod.

IPodRobot is a utility that's designed to get around one of Apple's most annoying limitations. When you plug an iPod or iPhone into a computer that has iTunes, you're able to sync the PC's playlist onto the device--but you can't go the other way. You can't copy what's already on the device to the PC.

Widescreen monitors are great for watching movies and organizing windows side-by-side, but a lot of time the space goes to waste. This week I've got a great tip that's particularly applicable to laptop and netbook users: Move the Windows taskbar to the side of the screen. Also, do you spend time and effort getting your Windows desktop to look just the way you want it, only to have some annoying program rearrange your icons? Read on for a cool little program that gets your desktop back to the way you want it--plus a quick way to resize your icons.

Want fine-grained control over the firewall built into Windows 7 and Windows Vista--especially the way it blocks outbound connections? Good luck. Even if you manage to unearth the controls buried deep in Windows menus and applications, you'll be baffled. Windows 7 Firewall Control Free solves the problem for you.

A number of years ago, we were in New York City's Times Square, when we looked up and saw an enormous billboard with a photograph that was taken with a 3.2 megapixel camera. The picture was quite impressive--not just for its size, but for the quality — at least when viewed from more than a dozen stories below. The software used to enlarge that small 3.2 megapixel image to a Times Square billboard was Genuine Fractals (US$160, 30-free trial with watermarks).

Done right, fireworks photos are dynamic and colorful, and they convey a sense of action better than almost any other kind of still image. Read on to learn how to capture some exciting fireworks photos of your own this summer.

The low price of storage means it's feasible for most laptop owners to expand the capacity of their machines. But if you're going to the bother of installing a new hard drive, why not go one better and opt for a solid-state disk (SSD) instead?

Twitter is all the rage. It was name-checked on Conan's second Tonight Show broadcast and was even extended into a comedy bit.